Winter ejected the empty magazine and sat up fast, reaching into his jacket to get the last full SIG magazine from his holder. He heard, behind him, the crunching and snapping of someone putting weight on broken window glass and the phit-phit-phit, of a silenced three-shot-burst. Like blows from a baseball bat, two of the rounds hit him in his armored lower back and one his thigh. A full magazine in one hand and the SIG in the other, Winter looked back in time to see a third figure outside on the porch, aiming into the room at him through the window.
A blast from Sean's shotgun made vapor of the left half of the man's neck and the gun's enormous recoil rocked her back. The cutout was dead on his feet, but with his gun's barrel rising as he fell back, the bullets harmlessly peppered the cypress ceiling.
Winter fought to catch his breath. He felt the warm blood, the dull ache, and knew that the third bullet had done serious damage to his thigh. He didn't have time to check on it.
“You're hit!” Sean cried out.
When the assailant in the stairwell fired again, Johnny pointed his gun over the bar and fired blind at Sam and Sean. He missed. Sam reached for the shotgun, but Sean wouldn't give it to him.
Winter popped the cutout as soon as he stepped back into the hallway and reached for his dead partner, perhaps to recover her unused magazines. Winter hit him in the side of his knee and in his left glove as he leaned over. Judging by the way he twisted out of sight, Winter knew he'd made an impression on the man.
Winter pantomimed the motion of tipping up a bottle to Sean, pointed to the bar, and opened his hand to imitate an explosion. Sean fired at the liquor bottles behind the bar, raining liquor and glass down on Johnny. “Stand up, Johnny!” she called out. “I got a bone to pick with you.”
“Woo-wee,” Sam said, coughing. “I believe she 'bout to shoot you good.”
The cutout in the hallway fired three-shot bursts to keep Winter pinned, and when he paused, Winter leaned out and emptied the SIG's last magazine. He was out of time, but he was going to try and sneak a round from his Walther PP under this cutout's visor when he came. The air was thick with cordite as Winter lay there with the gun aimed up, waiting. But the cutout didn't pass through the arch and appear above him. Winter heard the cutout's boots on the stairs, going down them fast, making no effort to be quiet.
Winter looked at Sean, aimed at the bar, and called out, “Sean, slide me your shotgun!”
Winter slid the empty Hi-Power across the floor.
Primed, now thinking the sound was the shotgun on its way across the floor to Winter, Russo stood anticipating a shot at an unarmed and wounded deputy. When Russo went down, it was because Winter's bullet had struck his shoulder. Winter could have killed him, but he only shattered his shoulder so he couldn't shoot at them. Winter wanted to ask him some questions.
Sean fired after Russo was down, breaking more of the bottles. When the alcohol hit the wound, Russo cried out in pain.
“Hooray, you, Dep'ty. You a bright one, boy, you!” Sam howled. “You a damn idiot, Johnny!” He laughed, then began coughing.
Russo screamed. “You fucking shot me! You're all gonna die!”
“I think your friend, Lewis, went home, Russo,” Winter said.
“Bullshit!” Russo croaked. “He wouldn't do that.”
Sean called out, “Hey, Johnny?”
“What?”
“Crybaby.”
It was remarkably quiet for a long second-air coming in from the broken windows caused the hanging cordite cloud to swirl and ebb.
Winter knew why the man had run when he heard a familiar thumping sound and the Blackhawk's brilliant halogen spotlight lit up the windows.
“Looks like the war's over,” Winter called to Russo. “Why don't you resist when they come in? They'd like nothing better than to blow your head off.”
“I give up.” Russo tossed his revolver over the bar. It smacked the floor and slid under the couch. He stood up slowly with his right hand holding a bar towel against his shoulder wound.
Sean laid the shotgun down and hurried over to check on Winter's leg. Winter held the Walther on Russo, who stood inside the bar looking down at Sean, a sour expression on his face. “Think I'm done? This is no biggie. I'll turn state's evidence and walk away from this. The feds want Sam, not me. I can put him away for keeps and they'll give me anything I want to do it. Sam gave me the money I passed to Herman Hoff-”
The sound of the ten-gauge's blast caught Winter off guard.
Russo still stood there. His eyes were still fixed on Winter and Sean but were now bulging, froglike, from their sockets. His jaw and his tongue were gone, and the cypress wall beside him looked like someone had hurled a bowl of spaghetti against it.
Winter swung the Walther's barrel toward Sam, who dropped the shotgun down by his side. He had reached down, lifted up the weapon and fired at his criminal protege's mouth.
“Tell 'em about me now, you rat bastard!” Sam yelled.
Russo tried to talk, but all he could manage was a series of gurgling noises.
Sean grimaced and turned away.
Despite the coughing fit it brought on, Sam laughed.
104
Through the downpour, Lewis and Tomeo fled east in defeat, moving through the woods as fast as they could without sounding like hunting dogs charging through the undergrowth, hot-trailing a deer. They stopped long enough to allow a six-man assault team, which was running in from the gate, to pass within ten feet of their position. The helicopter that had dropped off the team was circling the lodge.
No more than three minutes had passed from the time Lewis' three cutouts had entered the lodge until Lewis had ordered the withdrawal of his sole remaining team member.
“That guy with the handguns,” Tomeo said. “I've never seen anything like that shitter. I've got bruises all over my body.” He held up his padded left hand. “He broke my fucking knuckles. He knocked Apache down and put one in under her chin. All the time I was firing-every time I drew a bead, he knocked the cold shit out of me. He was like a machine. I never had a clean shot at him.”
“Massey,” Lewis said. “Let's get out of here while they're still busy.”
“I think Mickey hit him. Sean yelled out he was hit, right after she took Mickey out.”
Lewis said. “Sam must have shot Mickey. She doesn't have the balls. If Massey was hit, they'll take him to a hospital,” Lewis said. “Or the morgue, if we're lucky. If he's dead, we can go home.”
105
The sound of boots thundering up the stairs brought Winter a surge of relief. “Police!” Chet Long yelled out from the stairwell. “Police officers-Massey?”
“It's all clear, Chet!” Winter called out.
“We need a doctor,” Sean said as the men in black stormed into the room, weapons raised. U.S. MARSHALS was stenciled on their chests and across their backs, and they carried riot guns and AR-15s.
Chet knelt beside Winter and asked, “How bad?”
“Through and through,” Winter replied, wincing as a sharp pain from the leg wound hit him. “One of them got away before the helicopter arrived. Five-foot-ten, fully armored like his partner there.”
“As soon as we can get a dog in here we'll search the woods and try and round him up. The Highway Patrol has River Road closed tight, so he ain't driving out.”
“Please,” Sean pleaded, indicating Sam Manelli, whom she was kneeling beside. “He's badly hurt.”
“Radio EMS we have four for immediate transport,” Chet ordered. “Tell the coroner he might want to bring a big truck because there's bodies scattered all over the place.”
Sean slipped a bullet-ruptured throw pillow under Sam's head.
Winter told Chet, “You get Hank from the boat shed?”
“He's probably on his way to the hospital by now,” Chet said as he pressed a towel against Winter's thigh to stop the bleeding. “Clue me in, Winter. At first blush it looks like the guy out on the deck and gal in the hall killed Sam's men with those H and
Ks, then came up after… who-Sam and Russo?”
“Far as I know.”
“Who the hell do you think sent them?”
Sirens announced the arrival of patrol cars. Blue strobe lights reflected in the outside windows.
“I'm not sure,” Winter lied easily. There was no way he was going to repay Chet for saving his and Sean's lives by involving him in the other side of this mess. Winter figured that the woman cutout he'd killed might be the hitter from Richmond that missed Sean there. “Do me a favor and bag her SOCOM for ballistics.”
Chet glanced at Sean, who was holding Sam's hand. “Weren't we supposed to be rescuing her from him?”
An EMS crew arrived, and as Sam was being lifted onto the cot, he looked down at Winter and winked.
A pair of EMT techs rolled a gurney containing Russo from the room.
Winter nodded.
“Who shot the man out on the porch?” Chet asked.
“I did,” Sam said. “I went down kicking ass. If you don't remember anything else, you remember that.” He grimaced in pain. “Somebody, get this gal away from me.” He released Sean's hand and closed his eyes.
“Let's move him to the wagon,” the EMS tech said.
Sean's eyes filled with tears as she stood and watched her father being rushed down the hall. She knelt beside Winter and took his hand.
“Are you all right?” Winter asked her.
She shook her head slowly. “I'm not sure what all right is.”
“Let's get you out of here,” an EMS who had been wrapping Winter's leg said. Two men lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him out. Sean followed. As the crew took Winter from the house toward an ambulance, they passed by another. Inside, one technician was writing something down while another gave Sam Manelli CPR. Despite the chest-pumping charade, it was obvious there was no longer any reason to rush the gangster anywhere.
Chet stuck his head into the ambulance Winter and Sean had just entered. “Hey, Winter, the other guy's making a run for it. He fired on the helicopter. I doubt his armor is going to be very effective against the M-60.”
“He in a black Suburban?”
“How'd you know that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Hold up,” Chet told the ambulance crew. He had his phone to his ear, listening. “He's on River Road heading west,” Chet told Winter. “The units east of here are joining the pursuit. Okay, he's heading for the roadblock. Wait… he left River Road and he's heading up the levee.”
“He gets in the river, you'll lose him, Chet,” Winter said. “Tell them to stop him.”
“Okay, Bird One,” Chet said into the microphone. “You are authorized to use lethal force to stop that Suburban.”
Seconds later, the cloudbase in the western sky suddenly took on a muted orange tint. “That's all, folks,” Chet said.
106
Looking out over the tank farm, Lewis watched the fireball climb. Lewis knew how cops thought, how they acted. Figuring that all of the highway patrol prowlers available had chased after Tomeo, he pulled out from among the piles of garbage. Lewis had figured the authorities would have no idea of the exact size of the force they were opposing. In the pandemonium, while the cops were focused on Tomeo in the fleeing Suburban and the bloody meat they had left in and around the lodge, Lewis could have led a herd of elephants out onto River Road. It was possible that Tomeo had bailed out of the vehicle before it exploded. It didn't matter to Lewis because it wouldn't change anything. Tomeo was on his own.
Lewis kept the windows rolled up even though his nose was assaulted by the lingering stench of cigarettes, dog, and the old man's fetid body odor. He drove to River Road and aimed the Ford truck toward New Orleans before turning on the headlights. He hoped that the mattress and other trash didn't tumble out of the truck's bed and draw unwanted attention.
107
Sean had held Winter's hand from the time they got into the ambulance until they had wheeled him into the emergency room at Charity Hospital.
At the hospital Winter heard from one of Chet's deputies that the cutout had been ambushed by the chopper at the top of the levee. His armor hadn't been any help, especially considering that the Suburban's overlarge gasoline tanks had gone up, incinerating him after he had been riddled by most of the 7.62-mm rounds the M60 fired directly into his windshield from rock-throwing range.
The nurse gave Winter a shot of something that felt icy cold. He was unable to concentrate on anything at all-the crisp pain in his leg evolved into a dull pressure as the overlapping voices faded to whispers and trailed away. Winter was aware of the gentle lapping of water against the raft he found himself floating on-lying out in the warm sunshine, someplace far, far away…
Winter was alone in a corridor that seemed to stretch for miles in either direction. The door he had come through had vanished, Winter watched as a small speck grew into a person. As the figure drew closer, he could see that that it was a young man, seventeen or eighteen, wearing fatigues and a green beret.
Before he could clearly see the soldier's features, Winter knew the young man was familiar to him. Even the uniform didn't mask the cocky stride, the set of his friend's shoulders. Greg Nations was not merely younger than he had been when Winter first met him at Glynco-he was altogether different. Only the eyes were the same. The jaw was rounder, the nose wider, the cheeks fuller, and even the ears angled at nearly ninety degrees from his skull.
“Greg?” Winter said. “I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead.”
Greg skirted him and kept going.
“Greg!” Winter yelled. “Greg, wait! Where you going?” His heart was breaking. Grief and a sense of overwhelming loss filled him. “Don't go! Talk to me! Please!”
Winter caught up to him in a few strides. He grabbed Greg's shoulder and turned him so they were face-to-face.
The soldier was no longer Greg Nations. The soldier was now Lieutenant Commander Fletcher Reed, but where his eyes should have been, there was smooth skin, eyes crudely drawn on with a dark marker pen.
Winter woke with a start in a real hospital bed. Sean was curled up in a chair beside him, watching him.
“Bad dream,” he said.
“Do you feel like listening?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he said truthfully. He wanted to hear everything she had to tell him.
108
“I would have told you about Sam,” Sean began, “but from the time I was old enough to understand, my mother drummed into me that I should never tell anybody he was my father. It was my first and best-kept secret.”
Sean studied Winter's face for a reaction, but he just nodded and smiled weakly. “I can understand why you might keep a thing like that to yourself.”
“It was because my mother was afraid that Sam's enemies might kidnap me to hurt him. He had a lot of enemies always looking for an edge. My mother met Sam while she was at Newcomb studying painting. She was in a club one night and he saw her. He pursued her and she thought he was exciting. One thing led to another and she got pregnant. She told me that Sam was her first experience and she didn't take the necessary precautions.”
“Good thing she didn't,” Winter said.
“Sam wanted her to marry him, but she knew it was impossible. She was a free spirit and knew he would have smothered her, plus there was the danger angle. She ran away and lived with her aunt in Boston and had me. Sam showed up at their doorstep and my mother said that he picked me up and cried from joy.
“My mother refused to return to New Orleans, but she agreed to let him support us and to form a trust for me, which he gladly did. It's grown over the years and it allowed me to have a nice life, paid for my education, and supports me still. Because Sam loved me, my mother agreed to let him be involved in my life.
“Sam spent Christmas and my birthdays in Boston with us, and I used to spend summers here in New Orleans with my mother. Sam's men all thought she was his mistress. That way we could stay in his house or at the lod
ge, and except for having to use different last names and lie about where we lived, it was fine. Bertran Stern, his lawyer, knew who we were, and we communicated through him.”
“I remember that on the porch that night, you told Angela and me your father taught you how to shoot guns.”
“That picture of me with the duck was taken one winter when my mother and I came down and he took me hunting the first time. I didn't like killing birds, but I did it for him. He made sure I was skilled in defending myself in every possible way.”
“I got a taste of that on the beach.”
Sean laughed. “You sure did. He made sure I learned karate, defensive-driving techniques, and a lot of other survival skills normal girls don't need to know.”
“If he was so protective, how could you have believed he was trying to kill you?”
“I never knew him that well, and it's sad that I didn't. My mother, a beautiful and vibrant woman, never dated another man. A few years ago she confessed to me that it was because she didn't want Sam to think for a moment that she would betray him in any way. She told me that the one unpardonable sin in Sam's eyes was betrayal. She said that he would kill anyone who betrayed him, and I knew she was totally serious. I knew from a hundred sources that Sam had killed friends and members of his own family who had crossed him. I didn't think about it until after those men came to Rook and you said Dylan was working for Sam. Then I assumed he thought I had betrayed him with Dylan. But I never told Dylan that Sam was my father. I planned to eventually, but the time never felt right.”
“Russo knew you were Sam's daughter.”
Sean nodded. “When I met Johnny, he was working at Sam's vending company and he was nice to me. At some point, Sam told Johnny that I was his daughter. I had Johnny's private number because in the last few years Sam used Johnny to communicate with my mother and me. Sam trusted Johnny, but he never should have trusted anybody from his own world.”
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